Archive for October, 2015

Actress Charlotte Rae and Inside Edition anchor Deborah Norville will join us on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.Most of you know Charlotte Rae as Mrs. Garrett on The Facts of Life (and, before that, Diff’rent Strokes), as well as Schnauser’s wife on Car 54, Where Are You? and Molly the Mail Carrier on Sesame Street. But she also has a long list of stage credits, both on and off Broadway, including Li’l Abner, Threepenny Opera, Come Back Little Sheba, Pippin, Romeo and Juliet and dozens of others. Most remarkable, however, is that as often as Charlotte has made us laugh, she did often did so while overcoming great personal trauma, including the uncertainty of raising a son with autism at a time when very few medical experts knew much about it.

Charlotte opens up about her life in a new book, The Facts of My Life, that also includes great stories about her work and friendships with such legends as Meryl Streep, Jean Stapleton, Larry Hagman, Alice Ghostley, Stacy Keach, Julie Newmar, Tina Louise, Eartha Kitt, Paul Lynde, Dick Cavett, Kevin Kline, Angela Lansbury and Charles Nelson Reilly. Charlotte Rae will join us in our second hour.

For our listeners on the East Coast, Charlotte Rae will be signing copies of The Facts of My Life at legendary Sardi’s Restaurant in New York City on Tuesday, Nov. 3. For our listeners on the West Coast, Charlotte will sign copies of her book at the Barnes and Noble at the Grove in Los Angeles on Wednesday, Nov. 11.

Also joining us this week will be Deborah Norville, the Emmy Award-winning journalist who is celebrating her 20th anniversary this year as the host of Inside Edition. An eternal optimist, Deborah has not only believed in the power of positive thinking since she was a young girl, she has written or co-written several books on the subject — the latest of which, Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible, asks the question “How much better would life be if we lived it with possibility?”

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Think Possible: 101 Studies About a Positive Attitude to Improve Your Life is an inspiring collection of stories written by people who achieved success, overcame disabilities and loss, or otherwise transformed their lives through positive thinking and force of will. Deborah Norville will join us in our first hour.

We’ll commemorate the 40th anniversary of Saturday Night Live on the next edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

We’ll continue our look at milestone television premieres with a look at the history of Saturday Night Live, which originally premiered on NBC this month in 1975.

This week’s show will include an encore presentation of our February 2014 conversation with Emmy Award winner Alan Zweibel. Alan was not only one of the original writers of Saturday Night Live, where he wrote for Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Dan Akyroyd and the rest of the Not Ready for Prime Time Players, but he has written for such comedy legends as Steve Martin, Billy Crystal, Garry Shandling, Jon Lovitz, Larry David and Martin Short. Alan is also an accomplished author and novelist; his books include Bunny Bunny, the story of his 14-year friendship with Gilda Radner, which began in July 1975 on the first day of production meetings for Saturday Night Live. We will talk about Gilda Radner, plus we’ll ask Alan about his work on It’s Garry Shandling’s Show, Curb Your Enthusiasm and other aspects of writing during our first hour.

Fredd Wayne’s career on stage, film and television spans seven decades and includes appearances on such shows as The Twilight Zone, Maverick, 77 Sunset Strip, The Rockford Files, The Untouchables, Quincy, Perry Mason, Ironside, Frasier, Hogan’s Heroes, My Three Sons and at least a hundred others. If you are a fan of Bewitched, you know that Fredd Wayne played Benjamin Franklin in a famous two-part episode of Bewitched that is still fondly remembered today. What you may not know is that Fredd has played Ben Franklin on thousands of other occasions over the past fifty years, ever since he began studying the life of the American patriot in 1964.

We’ll ask Fredd about his lifelong passion and interest in Franklin, plus we’ll talk about some of his other current projects—as well as ask him to share a few memories about some of his other work in television—when he joins for an expanded conversation that begins at the end of our first hour.

We’ll welcome back actress Kathy Garver and television writer/producer Rita Lakin on a brand new edition of TV CONFIDENTIAL, Friday at 7pm ET and PT on Share-a-Vision Radio, KSAV.org.

Everyone knows Kathy Garver as “Cissy Davis” from Family Affair, the beloved CBS sitcom that will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2016. But Cissy Davis and Family Affair are just part of the fabric of Kathy’s life and career, which includes early roles in such films as The Ten Commandments and Night of the Hunter, a host of stage credits in venues across the country (including a recent turn as Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer), and a long list of credits as a voice artist on many animated series, audio books and the nationally syndicated Twilight Zone Radio series. But, for all her accomplishments, Kathy remains very much the same down-to-earth person that she was growing up—and she owes that to the values that were instilled in her by her family, her faith, and her core group of friends, many of which have been in her life since she was a girl.

This week’s program will also include a return visit from our friend Rita Lakin. Rita not only spent more than two decades in television writing and producing such shows as Dr. Kildare, Peyton Place, The Mod Squad, Dynasty and The Movie of the Week, but was one of the first solo female writers in network television—at a time (mid 1960s through the late 1980s) when the industry was still very much an old boys network.